The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Jeff Bezos thinks of himself as a great man, and why shouldn’t he?
‘Our vision is to have every book ever printed, in any language,
available in under 60 seconds.’ He wrote that ten years ago; now it’s
almost true. When he graduated from high school, first in his class,
he gave a speech to his classmates on how the fragility of the Earth
required them to explore outer space and work towards rehousing
humanity in orbiting space stations. He has used some of his fortune
to turn 290,000 acres in West Texas into a giant laboratory for new
spacecraft, which he claims will be so efficient and inexpensive to
service that everyone will eventually be able to leave the planet. In
his annual letter to the shareholders of Amazon, he acknowledges that
some of his decisions may seem inexplicable, but ‘it’s all about the
long-term.’ To that end, he has donated \$42 million to the
construction of the Clock of the Long Now, which is supposed to tick
for 10,000 years. His temporarily is not our temporarily.